Amy Chua’s book—Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother—might be more accurately described as a cultural phenomenon, what with all the attention, commentary, contempt and handwringing its roll out has occasioned.

I can’t be the only writer who hopes all the current screaming over Chua’s book might be some sort of distorted historical echo of what books used to be (Louis Menad refers to the days of “books as bombs”); Chua’s book suggests that perhaps once again, books can have the incendiary power and importance they once did and lately seem to have been lacking. Think of Steal This Book or The Feminine Mystique or The Autobiography of Malcolm X—books that jolted our collective consciousness and changed our world. Then think of Eat, Pray, Love. Please dear Lord, writers are asking right now, let this Chua thing snowball. Let books not only sell but matter again, since writing them is the only thing we know how to do.

As a parenting journalist and a parent, I think a lot of people are missing a very obvious and important point as they lament Chua’s awfulness, lambast her “strictness,” name call (David Brooks, in an attention-grabbing move, referred to her as "a wimp" while other called her a harpy), interpret our fixation with her book and her parenting style as a symptom of our anxiety that China is kicking our a*s globally, and just kind of pile on for fun (for example, trotting out the fact that Chua had a nanny as if it somehow makes her less of a mother or more of a hypocrite. Oh please, how else are you going to get tenure at Yale? You need a nanny—or a wife). In large part, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother has held up a mirror to our very own version of trampling each other to death at soccer games—we are a country that goes berserk when it comes to our national blood sport, judging mothers. Take your own child or someone else’s out without mittens on a cold day if you don’t already know what I’m talking about.

Lost in all the noise, much of it insipid and reductive—Time asks, “Is tough parenting the answer?”—is a fundamental truth. Which is that there is, and isn’t, an “answer” to the question Chua seems to be posing, a simple “right way” to parent. Ask the sociologists and social and clinical psychologists who have been studying parenting styles for years—and broken them down into authoritarian (high levels of control and low levels of warmth), authoritative (high levels of control, high levels of warmth) and permissive (low levels of control and high levels of warmth) styles. What they discovered is that permissive parenting serves no one. Not the kids. Not the parents. And not the marriages either—guess who has the power in a household where permissive parenting “rules”? Hint: It’s not the parents. And when marriages revolve around the children rather than children revolving around marriages, couples report higher levels of dissatisfaction—and divorce more frequently.

Authoritative parenting, this body of research tells us, is what works best for most kids. In the words of one study:

Research has generally linked authoritative parenting, where parents balance demandingness and responsiveness, with higher social competencies in children. Thus, children of authoritative parents possess greater competence in early peer relationships, engage in low levels of drug use as adolescents, and have more emotional well-being as young adults. Although authoritarian and permissive parenting styles appear to represent opposite ends of the parenting spectrum, neither style has been linked to positive outcomes, presumably because both minimize opportunities for children to learn to cope with stress. Too much control and demandingness may limit children’s opportunities to make decisions for themselves or to make their needs known to their parents, while children in permissive/indulgent households may lack the direction and guidance necessary to develop appropriate morals and goals.

So there’s a ringing endorsement, it seems, for authoritative (versus authoritarian or permissive) parenting. In other words, don’t throw the birthday card your six-year-old made you back at her with the directive, “You didn’t put enough effort into this. So I reject this gift”; but neither should you praise her every squiggle, thought and poop as a wonderful achievement (child psychologist and parenting author Ron Taffel writes with amazement of his experience observing Manhattan parents praising their kids for going down the slide. “These children were being praised,” he observed, “for being subject to the laws of gravity.”)

You’re thinking, “Well, duh, I should walk the middle road as a parent. And so, presumably, should everybody else.” But it’s not so simple. Because research and common sense also suggest that different children do better with different styles. Authoritarian parenting styles tend to be more common among African-American families and among ethnic minorities, and may insulate children in high-risk, low income neighborhoods from environmental threats like drug prevalence. And in Asian American families in particular, authoritarian, Tiger Mother-ish parenting is linked to social success, self-confidence and academic achievement.

Yes, Amy Chua was courting a backlash and being provocative and taunting you (if you’re a permissive parent) when she said that permissive parents are bad parents and when she (or her agent or her publisher) decided to call her article in the WSJ “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.” But she is also right. Don’t let the fact that she’s an authoritarian parent—wrong for many families—dissuade you from the fact that she’s right for some, and particularly her own.

the only good she has done which many parents already do is actually spend time with her kids and make sure they study and practice, but you can do all that without verbally abusing your child. Its too bad nobody told her this. Really im not surprised she is a professor. Many people go into teaching because they can always have control, just like they have control over their kids. The thought of them working with true peers scares the crap out of these people because how are they going to get their angries out if not on poor hapless folks like kids and students who almost have no power.

Wednesday, I appreciated the distinctions between authoritative parenting, authoritarian parenting and permissive parenting. While I personally found many of the ideas in Chu's book over the top, I appreciate that her book has instigated conversation about the way many American parents have ben parenting their children the past couple of decades.

When my children were young (they are now all in their 20's), there was an over-emphasis, almost neurotic obsession with instilling good self-esteem into our children. We were products of the 50's and 60's and many of us had parents who didn't give a whole lot of credence to our feelings but were more focused on our responsibilities. Many of us ended up in therapy to focus on the feelings that had not been addressed by our parents.

I think we then got a little neurotic with wanting our children to feel good about themselves. They got trophies by merely being part of a team and kindergarten parties were the rage (they've gotten worse actually). I began to feel uncomfortable with all the focus on feeling good when I began to read studies that showed that children who were given construction criticism versus children who were told that whatever they did was fantastic, had higher levels of self-esteem.

I began to joke with my peers that our children would end up in therapy lamenting the fact that their parents had helped them feel great about themselves, but that they were having problems not knowing how to work really hard for what they wanted.

I was wrong. I have found with many of the "you're so special" generation that continues to today, many find they have no need for therapy because, hey, they are special and unique, thank you very much!

I've worked with college students as they are applying for jobs and have to dissuade them from putting down why the company would be good for THEM, versus why they would be an asset to the company.

There's a balance to everything and this article does a great job at showing why. Thank you.

Your writing is so crisp and clear. Your posts are actually enjoyable because they are so beautifully and artfully crafted. As to your take on Chua's book, I agree that one must weigh many things as a parent--particularly the needs of a given child and the circumstances of the moment, both of which can change in a nanosecond. Forget about parenting styles and the literature; as always you make a compelling argument for responding to the particular needs of each individual child.

I too hope to see more books that are bombs. But this Chua book is not one of them. The interest in this book is as often voyeuristic ("did she really call her daughter 'garbage'? How did she get tenure AND spend four hours a day per child supervising music practice?") as it is a substantive debate about child-rearing, where, as WM points out, the consensus has been for some time that authoritative parenting--neither too heavy-handed or too permissive-- is healthiest.

I am reading a book now that should be a bomb: Poisoned for Profit, by Phillip and Alice Shabecoff. It's the Silent Spring of our time, about how the epidemic of child illnesses and birth defects is being caused by chemicals in the environment. There are a lot more of these poisons in our lives than there were even fifteen years ago. But this book has gotten very little publicity.

Chua's book is mainly just a fun, gossipy sort of distraction from more serious issues facing parents and children.

Elizabeth,
Thank you for reading and commenting. I hope others will take a look at Poisoned for Profit. Thanks for the recommendation and for broadening the discussing about child well-being.
-Wednesday